Their Future Lab (and what's in between)
by sugar92
Summary: Based on this prompt: Can be a 5 1 or a regular fic or anything you want. Show me some examples of Newton being slutty, fucking every other scientist he worked with before Hermann came along at the same time as funding was cut. No more scientists because they can't afford more, therefore instead of instantly trying to fuck Hermann he realizes he has to make their partnership work


**Newt/Any Before Hermann arrived, Newt shagged every other scientist he worked with**

_(Anonymous)_

2013-07-20 12:42 am (UTC) (Link)

Can be a 5+1 or a regular fic or anything you want.

Show me some examples of Newton being slutty, fucking every other scientist he worked with before Hermann came along at the same time as funding was cut. No more scientists because they can't afford more, therefore instead of instantly trying to fuck Hermann he realizes he has to make their partnership work long-term. Along the way he gets to know Hermann better and develops feelings for him.

So maybe 5 times Newton loved and left a fellow scientist, and one time he loved and stayed with one?

Bonus if some of Newt's previous conquests were female, because it's totally my headcanon that he's bi and there's not really any fic yet that has him as such :)

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Beverly Kats

He's running late at his first day of work and he's grinning from ear to ear.

Knifehead is burning the skin on his right forearm and Newton is on the seventh heaven because now there's (finally!) a companion presence to Trespasser.

He got Trespasser on his right forearm in a shack in downtown Berlin when he was 17. He paid a fuckton of money for it but he felt more alive than he had in, well, 17 years.

He got Knifehead the night before and went straight to his dingy apartment, thinking about buying the salve first thing tomorrow morning.

Yeah right. Aforesaid 'tomorrow morning' had a different plan for him and his phone screamed bloody hell at him while his alarm went off.

"Shatterdome. Work" it read. Since when did he put alarm in his phone? And two instant thoughts popped almost simultaneously in his mind. The first one was '_What the fuck?_' and '_I didn't even got the job, fucking let me sleep._' Because it was 0600 am and his arm was burning the law of self-combust on him.

His second thought, though, was the phone call he received two weeks prior "congratulating" him of the beginning of his five-years-long internship at the PPDC.

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Brunico's Shatterdome was one of the most majestic buildings he laid eyes on. With a whole side made of glass to let the sunlight in, 30 floors above ground and 10 floors carved in the mountain, it looked like a tree made of steel and glass.

They, the interns, were stationed in a lab as wide as half the floor, with a section for each of them.

'Sections' being the key word here since they walls separating them didn't go up to the ceiling, and since no one spoke in whispers like the Superintendent basically told them to, every sound was shared.

Beverly was the only one who doesn't laugh at him when he arrives late at the 'roll call'. She's stationed at the section opposite to his and she doesn't take shit from anyone, either for her sex, her unclassifiable skin color or her fascination for the dismembered bodies of the Kaijus left behind.

Newton freaking adores her.

Beverley is ten years his senior, and looks at him with a sideway glance, letting him know that the amount of synapsis energy she is sparing to his rambling is just right there with the amount she would spare for the peanut crumbs she left beside her shots at the bar.

(She drinks the strongest vodka Newton had ever, and would ever taste.)

Two weeks into the internship, Newton makes the mistake to show up in the canteen with his sleeves up. She was only one who hadn't snickered, tried to punch or walked straight out of the room.

She looked at him, looked at his arms, looked at him, raised her eyebrows slightly and kept on eating. He sits with her since then.

Newton thinks he must have done with whole 'not take shit from anyone' wrong, because even if he does it since he hit puberty, Beverley has as much as brush her hair to the opponent's opposite direction and they regard her with wide eyes and a look that leaks 'respect'. So the first thing he learns from her is not to take any shit from anyone, like she does.

It took him a month before he thinks 'grow a pair, myself' and asked her out. Plus, internship lasts one year for each Shatterdome and they might not see each other again. Also, why the fuck no?

He's tense as a violin cord, and for the first time he goes into a lab nervous and skittish. He grips the coffee mug he brought as excuse and exhaling slowly, he cuts out her greeting (smooth there Newton). Apparently, she is surprisingly both sweet as melted caramel and head-on as the tide in private.

Their first dates aren't proper dates, they don't even stay in the city, it's more like a series of hiking excursions in the mountains.

Beverley doesn't nearly as much observation, cataloguing, research and scanning as she does in the lab. She just hikes and tugs at her beanie from time to time, like she's afraid a small animal will come and snatch it away.

She teases him because Newton is as hyper as he is back in the lab, rambling non-stop about the type of fauna and the eating habits of red squirrels.

She jokes about him being a scaredy-cat in front of people, one morning at the lab, and he realizes then why she takes him hiking instead of hanging downtown. He can't fight the clench in his chest even if he wanted to.

He adores Beverley because she's the only one who understands his crave to understand every nook of the kaijus, body to mind, along with his relative nervousness about slash around human beings.

Beverley Kats is also, among other things, the first human being who engaged in a sexual relationship with him.

Newton can't believe that his virginity went to an ex-forensic woman (ex-forensic, man, it was like, the antichrist to him in college, he hated those snobs so much he set their rooms on fire on a memorable occasion), with ten more years of experience on her than him but, hey, Beverly fucking Kats happened, so.

What perks him is that he had planned it out, though. He would have gone with a prostitute for a while, gaining some basic knowledge about the subject, and then he would have gone straight for the next scientist back at the lab. Perhaps he would have been dumped by a couple of girls before he could have mastered the courage to ask Beverly out, or something along these lines. .Plannet it.

But she said yes at his half-joking, half-serious try, and all his convoluted plans hurl themselves and fly out of the window.

So this is how he loses his virginity to Beverly honest-to-god Kats.

And every other virginal thought he could have left in his mind.

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Beverly Kats is not an ex-forensic doctor turned kaiju forensic biologist, no, she's a kaiju forensic Force Of Nature.

A silent, supportive, unwavering force of nature.

And Newton comes to admire every synapsis her beautiful mind can spring up as much as every single inch of her goddess-like body.

She guides him, gently but firmly, in a world where sex isn't a heated task to undertake, but the way with two partners can achieve pleasure, together.

Newton is as fucked up as his fucked up obsession with Kaijus could let him, and some more on his own, but he never, never thought himself as the bottom. He doesn't know why, he doesn't know how, don't ask him.

Beverly pries it from his fingers too and gently let it slide out of the window (along with his virginal plans).

They would go out at night, drink something, shouting after some sport match along with everybody else in the bar, murmur about work for a while, mostly complaining about some stupid jerks in the mathematicians department, and when they would go to her much more cared, much cleaner, a tad bigger apartment. Where she would share with him bits and pieces of sex with him on the rough wool blanket of her bed that smelled faintly of coffee and old.

She teaches him how to hold his orgasms, – and thanks Jesus he leaves his wonder at hearing a woman talking about men's ejaculation so precisely by the door, on the right, right there with his shoes - she teaches him how to touch a woman, how to touch _her_, she frowns at how he touches himself and, yeah, she may or may not give him a few hints with that as well.

They doesn't do the regularly dating business, of course.

She is, after all, ten years her senior. She's had a couple of convoluted relationship, and an important one, he can see that, and their point of view, due to their age, backgrounds and personal interests doesn't exactly align. So, yeah, it's easier. Newton doesn't feel choking on a leash so this is good for now.

Consequently, they date other people, too. Or, well, _he_ dates other people too. Girls.

The first relationship Newton goes into, and it's an open one. He feels like lightning candles in grateful rituals to the full moon, complete with the sacrifice of small pets – Mrs Elton's beagel, who daily pees on his door, was way up the list – but thankfully his scientist half is above it and settles for a silent 'thank god' when he comes down the waitress girl's throat he picked up this week.

He does casual hookups with girls at the pub, but when he feels daring and smug he dates a girl from the lab who talkes too much about work, and two married women from out of town, and a waitress (not that one) and a postwoman.

It's not until Christmas, with the cold air fast as a bullet coming in a narrow, concentrated, powerful stream from the nook the mountains form, that he hopes that maybe it would cover up half his voice and the other half wouldn't come out shaky as an earthquake, because he tells her he has always thought he was gay and that she has turned his world upside down and shook it and made a mean Screwdriver out of it.

Beverley smiles, and it was small and shy, almost asking for permission, and she bows her head slightly to the side as if she's seeing him for the first time, and she clasp his hand in hers, for the first time since he knows her, as they wait in line in front of the cinema.

The next week she takes him to a bar while he is manhandled, blinded by a black leather band.

He hears some snickering as they wait somewhere but Newton's not worried in the least, Beverly has his elbow through every second of it. He could be standing in front of a kaiju and he wouldn't be afraid. Just thrilled. God he wants to see one up close so much it hurts.

The inside of the bar derails his train of thought from kaijus – that is, in fact, stupefying to begin with - since it takes him nearly five minutes to see that everyone in here is a dude.

She has taken him to a gay club. Holy dude.

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One of most painful memories of all his relationships is when Beverly lets him top on the couch in her living room on a unbelievably cold, ice-covered morning.

She guides him all the way through as if he were still a virgin and he can't believe he gets to touch such a fantastic woman when he spent half his life thinking he was adamantly gay.

She supports his elbows and he cries when he comes and it's messy and embarrassing because o my god he's topping Beverly fucking Kats, but it was perfect all the same, and so wrong in so many ways all the same. It's the first and last time and maybe Newton fell in love a bit with something who isn't kaiju-related and fuck his life maybe that was also the moment he starts to hate her.

He hates her all the spring and the summer, even if it doesn't show until the last couple of months.

He got Onibaba on his shoulder three days after its death on his beloved dingy, positively unsanitary shack in Berlin and he got from evil glares to punches to official complaints.

She shakes her head and smiles her little smile and he knows he can go out with her that night, after all, and relish in that old, heavenly stench of that rough wool blanket.

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It's not until the psychological evaluation of routine at the end of the year that they find it.

Newton managed to hide it when he got the job at the PPDC but he can't now. Beverly fucking Kats happened, after all.

So they diagnose it and try to reassure him saying that it's just a minor syndrome, or even a part of a syndrome, and they even say that he doesn't need to worry about his employment, that it shows on paper that it doesn't affect his work, like he didn't fucking know that already.

But he hates her so much these last few months, he's so relieved when the Superintendent holds a goodbye roll call and gives a little (read: one hour) speech no one really listens to and no one will remember, because that's the way the world goes around.

He hates the fact that he hated her, though. Such a strong, beautiful woman. But more than anything he hates the fact that he knows he isn't going to meet another woman, or man, like Beverly honest-to-kaijus Kats, hands down.

And that's all the reason to add another layer to the mask.

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Dr Zackary Uriah "Zack" Addy

When the superintendent introduces him to Zack, he receives a don't-think-you-even-tried grimace.

All that Newton can do is try not to grin the whole time.

Anchorage's Shatterdome is a colossus of cement that lays itself one third in the frozen water of the bay like a stirring, fat, fucks-to-give-none grey cat.

Their lab section is one of the coldest, if not the coldest, in order to keep the already scarce kaiju body parts intact, since most of the working cryo fluid has been divided again, with the growth of the Shatterdomes.

Laboratories are arranged as beehive cells. The hallway creates the frame of the polygon, the labs the area. Every lab is paired up with a twin one, each pair sharing storage closet, personnel closet and modules to request Kaijus' parts or classified data usb pens.

The canteen is section-common, thankfully, but on the downside their apartments are too far away from the compound, in Newton's opinion.

Newton starts with a shitty mood about the seasonal full physical because of the radical change of climate for the vast majority of the staff, and mostly about all the heat being gone to the 'finer science' section, where the mathematicians are working out the length, width and stableness of the Breach.

Posh little bastards, the lot of them.

Newton likes Zack instantly, though. The first days he hovers over the transport of his precious kaiju bones like a mother bear, fangs and claws out, and politely growls at the shipping men every two seconds, shooting the density measures of each bone to uninterested people every once in a while.

In a couple of weeks everyone positively loathe Zack, it's a fact, and Newton has already five backup plan in case his plan to ask him out without compromising their working productivity freaks the younger forensic out. He thinks he's got enough ammunition and goes to battle.

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Zack went to a primary boarding school for loaded people, after that he went straight to another boarding school for even more loaded people. Newton knows this since Zack interjects his murmured monologues with bits of memories from what he learned in those social environments, as Zack calls them, and Newton has to grip the edge of his desk so tight his knuckles are white because he can't stand hearing about genius, brilliant individual being bullied and not seeing the cruelty behind it.

"_They were fond of making fun of my clothes_." He often says, head turned straight to the interlocutor, zero traces of hate in his voice. Newton wonders if Zack is capable of hate, when they sit apart from everyone in the canteen and people throw disgusted glances at them and he sees Zack noticing them with clear, wide-open eyes and he doesn't say anything, not so much as acknowledging them with a nod of his straight locks.

It took the thick, dense world ten years of boarding school and three skipped years to recognize Zack's superior IQ and give him an internship at the Jeffersonian, but Newton thanks god that they'd found him 'disturbing' there – Zack's words - and they relieved him of his post with an offer to complete his PhD at the Shatterdome.

Zack's got the Asperger and the obvious gaps of idioms and pop culture knowledge set him apart from his peers as well as from his superiors, and if someone had known and pointed out at Newton that he was rotten in the head for reveling in the fact that Zack had been dismissed from society so he could have him all for himself, he'd punch them in the face and spit at them. Fuck 'em.

They are two deranged individuals making their way to their rock stars future. At least that's what Newt see when he sees how people glances at them chatting in a bar in town.

One thing that Newton love is that they talk about the most absurd things. If kaijus ever got sick, what would kaijus eat in this world, what was the DNA of the dinosaurs, what the density of a Triceratops' bone with a grade 4 cancer and going down spiraling from the fifth shot of Jack Daniels.

Newton loves Zack because he looks straight at him when they both go wayward with their theories in the lab; because he talks in a steady murmur, toneless, his body gone rigid as if to preserve energy for his synapsis, his eyes almost sparkling, so focused they are. It's beautiful, it's breath-taking, it's a sea of sparkling intelligence, pure wit and Newton wants to take a breath, wants to fill his lungs with it, want to abandon the life line and drown in it.

Newton hats Zack because he doesn't need coffee to stay awake, he's got horrible beverage tastes – seriously, who could drink ananas and raspberry juice and praise its nutritional supply, it's insane - and could get sugar highs with a mere cube if he hadn't any in days.

He was the silliest person on this hemisphere when he got sugar high, though.

Newton could pretty much pass for Zack's lost twin, that's how much they move in sync now. On the whole I-want-to-get-in-your-pants part, though, he doesn't know how to even approach the younger man and for the entire autumn he jerks off in the shower of his shabby apartment picturing himself and Zack on the wall of his bathroom, his back pressed hurting against the thermo, Zack listing the nicknames of the kaiju phalanges he made up when he was in college.

Which, yeah.

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What lights up the fuse for Newton comes in on a Thursday afternoon drenched in sweet-smelling smoke.

His name's Jack Hudgins and makes a beeline to hug Zack as soon as he located him in the lab.

He hugs him and Zack smiles and the Hudgins man sing-songs something sounding like "king of the lab" and Zack is smiling some more, if possible.

Newton can only watch, motionless, mouth gaping, pincers half-way towards the kaiju's vein spread on his desk. The only thing moving is his brains, spinning madly like a freaking hurricane. Didn't Zack's co-workers at the Jeffersonian hate him? Weren't they all disgustingly arrogant pricks? How come that he didn't extract a smile like that from Zack in all the past months? Wait, scratch that. How come that he didn't make him smile, period. And who the hell is this Hudgins man, Zack never brought him up for fucks sake, and shouldn't they all been killed by the kaijus by now?

And Newton cant' bring to himself to chastise his malignant thoughts until that Hudgins perfect-curly-hair-and-radiant-smile has been shipped on an airplane - don't hope for it to crash, Newton, he repeats like a mantra as he lays in bed that night - and he grabs Zack's soft bicep to spun him around and brings their mouths together in front of his apartment the evening after.

It shouldn't have surprised him so much, in reality, that he spent months fidgeting in self-awareness and unresolved boners. It's all Beverley's fault, he declares. Coming out of one's youth with a dominant kind of attitude is not the brightest idea if you go there and practically fall for the one and only Beverley Kats. It's downright detrimental, if not self-harm.

Newton muses that his self-confidence in his sexual prowess had been slightly but momentarily warped by the scorching passion that was her being; thankfully Zack came around and to show him that he is still owner of his body, he is still in control and he can be the one in control in a relationship again.

Not that either of them will even mouth the word 'relationship'.

Not after the night in which Zack was beaten by some guys of the maintenance team (he can only suppose) in a dark sideway alley, while Newton was making out with a ripe brunette downtown, and Zack called Hudgins from the hospital, and Newton from his flat in the morning.

Not after Newton simultaneously realizes two things; that he is more into this than Zack is, shocking as it sounds, and that he is genuinely starting to hate the lad.

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It starts with the most innocuous, everyday little things, really.

Seeing Zack sleeping beside him after a good night of booze and sex, the light streaming shily through the shutters in the earlier hours of dawn.

'_How many times that Hudgins bloke saw him like this'_. he wonders.

Or when he goes in the lab after a good night at a random date's apartment, some girl, some guy, it doesn't matter, and Zack is there handing him a cup of double caramel shot, like he hates it because it's too sweet but Zack was too sweet the first time he offered it to him and promised it was the best of the best.

'_How many mugs did he handed to him_.' he wonders.

Newton's not stupid. He noticed the brass plate on his perfectly neat worktable saying "KING OF THE LAB", all in capital, proud letters. Even though Zack never mentioned the words once. Even though Newton catches him, time after time, looking at it with an unbelievably soft look sparkling in his eyes and probably, maybe, Newton couldn't swear on it, a smile lifting his soft cheeks.

And Zack doesn't smile like that at the two of them together, never.

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It's mid-internship when Newton discovered that the Shatterdome psychologist suspected Zack had Asperger. Or some degree of it. Or maybe the bitch was crazy and wanted to ruin his life, or both's.

When Zack walks into the lab, that evening, he looked like he was in trance and maybe he was, judging by the blank stare, - at this point Newton can recognize the difference Zack's normal 'blank' stare and his upset 'blank' stare as easily as breathing and fuck if that's an enormous achievement for him - the rhythmic walking and the clutching of a plastic folder in front of his chest, like a shield, but too close, like he couldn't bring himself to read it.

That and the fact that Zack has, in fact, the day off.

Three days later the Hudgins bastard is back in town, and he even has the audacity to walk Zack to the lab the morning next his arrival. The only reason Newton doesn't throttles him is being shipped from Singapore's military base in a cryo fluid-filled container and he can't lose his job at least until he gets to analyze it.

On a second thought, you know what, Newton doesn't care. The second day of Hudgins' stay he's flying to Europe, since there had been an attack and the body parts removal and transport is a slow process, – the knee-cap coming from Singapore is from two years earlier - especially if your Shatterdome isn't in the top-of-the-list priority.

Two Jaegers are destructed in this last attack, a pilot unit has been declared DIA and the other dismissed to the benches, so to speak. There's rumor that the PPDC is starting to look at potential pilots outside the military backgrounds too and if that's not a sign of the apocalypse then what the hell is it. This two news has struck the public more than the latest account of casualties, although Newton can't bring to himself to cry for the losses, he never did, neither human or robotic, but he too, feel an unknown tension in his body and it stays under his skin all that month.

Anyway, he's on an airplane to his favorite tattoo shack, err, shop in Berlin to get Axehead on his disturbingly blank shoulder and fuck if he forces a smile on his smile at that thought because fuck everyone, they're never there for him why the hell would he be there for anyone.

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It takes all his will not to squeeze the life out of Zack when he sees a minutely ripped mental institution applying form on the wall. It's clear that after being ripped to shreds someone put it back together and got it a blatantly flashy gold frame and tried several times to put it on the wall, judging the small constellation of circular cracks on the wall.

It hangs there, beside his stupid frame with too many family member smiling and holding each other's shoulder, the one he always teases Zack about because, Jesus Christ, they weren't even mimicking horns or making stupid faces or wearing embarrassing clothes, how's that even a real life family.

While he stands there, grasping the handle of their shared closet until the metal cuts his palm and after his hand goes numb and stops hurting and after his heartbeat gets louder than the conditioner system and then quieter, he realizes what he thought.

"_all his will not to squeeze the life out of Zack_"….

He tightens his fists until all he can see behind his closed eyelids is a string of _fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_ and tries to find the path out of the looming, dark forest that his brain suddenly turned into and he's scared as fuck, his skin's that of a duck by now, his legs are jelly, he can't feel his knees, his head's pounding. He stands breathy, yet motionless and the thought strikes him hard, as hard as the wave of shame he first experienced looking at the contempt in his father's eyes, years and years earlier.

'_I'll have to take those fucking pills again'_. It's the very first thing he thinks. And to make it real, he says it, voice as low as he can utter it. It's not worse but it sure as hell doesn't make it better and he tries not to bite his lip, otherwise he would biting down so hard blood would flow in a few seconds.

'_I'll have to go to fucking sessions again'_. And god almighty there aren't enough words in the English vocabulary to describe how much he hates having to speak about himself to anyone on a bi-weekly – or worst, weekly – basis.

As if he hasn't trouble enough thinking about himself alone.

As if he doesn't know what kind of a nutjob he is, how profoundly runs his abyss, his own personal Breach.

As if speaking it aloud would make it real, – in a deep, deep recess, he knew that it would – or that he would know himself more. But there's the problem. He doesn't fucking _want_ to know himself how many times does he to say that!

And yet, as constant as the circumnavigation of the Earth around the Sun, Zack is standing there, shoulders hunched as he absolutely doesn't blink in his microscope, his neatly organized work tables spread around him, not the tangled mess of desks and capsules, all angles that stab at Newton's hipbones every time he turns around too fast.

Zack with his deluxe collection boxes of Firefly and LOTR, his framed Comic Con ticket; Zack who took half the blame when that Greenberg prick of a jerk filed a complaint against the noise and the absurd working hours (fuck off, five am is a perfectly normal working time to try to drill a hole in kaiju bones, ignorant idiot).

Zack who closes his eyes every time Newton kisses him under the navel, as if from an invisible line downward he just can't bring himself to look.

Surprisingly – or unsurprisingly, he doesn't fucking know at this point – it doesn't take an ounce of will to turn on his heels and slither in the hallways to the Marshall's office, calling in sick by the Lieutenant when he crosses her.

He IS sick, after all. Just not your average, showing it to the world kind of sick, that's all.

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It's just like the second and third year of college, when Newton had looked at the year just passed and wondered how the hell did he make it to the summer without him noticing. It's totally crazy, where's the time gone?

The plot twist plops in June, actually, when it's proven by the samples collected from Axehead body that his and Zack's theory is reality.

The kaiju's bones density is significantly lower when it's alive. While Zack fawned over his bones, Newton combined a speck of bones with a blood sample, quadrupling its temperature he obtained a speck of bones in its original form. Since it was close to the density of the granite, their lab reported that yes, it had been the experimental plasma bullet which had shattered the kaiju's knee-cap, not the jaeger's precedent fist.

The two of them felt so pompous they spent the whole week hooting at the interns every time they saw them pass in front of their door, because like hell they were just passing, nobody did ever, they were trying to sneak up on them. Until they stopped. The interns, of course. They still continued, and when they happened to take a five they bolted a random lab's door, stuck just their heads inside and shrieking till their voices held, making a run for it after. It's the best Newton had in months.

Zack wears something that could vaguely pass for a smile almost every day, at least the first five seconds that takes him to open and close the thick metal door of their lab and greet Newton.

Newton, on the other hand, spent a total of thirteen hours of undivided attention and appraisal from the Marshal; when a report came in stating that an intern from the mathematician department, a certain Gottlieb, and his hypothesis of how many seconds a kaiju takes to get on its feet and plunge a superb left on the jaeger was proven right, thus implying that the jaeger's trunks rotation has to be upgraded.

The "_idiots, the lots of you_" at the end of said report was no more than delicately _implied_, of course.

The story of the biologist's seething for a week, sneering and almost spitting on the ground every time a mathematician crossed his path around the Dome was one which the Shatterdome personnel would have passed on for generations.

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Newton has been on suppressants for a week the night he fishes Hudgins' number from Zack's phone and calls him.

He swears a lot, he swears at Hudgins, he calls him names, he doesn't quite let him have a chance to talk, he swears a bit more in general, then he proceeds to tell him what a painfully dumbass he must be to having let go of Zack. He tries to make a summary of Zack's personality and it's fairly winsome in his head but his mouths conveys a string of tiny, stupid details and flashes of insanity. Newton doesn't know what he alone witnessed of Zack and what's common knowledge of him and he wants to smack himself at the thought of having let go bits and parts of Zack to the Hodgins bastard, but then, too late.

"_Evil lies in the details_" some tiny voice in his mind tells him, but he doesn't dare to acknowledge it.

It feels good to have this connection between him and the man at the other end of the receiver. He feels like he's connecting with a tiny little speck of humanity outside of his inner comfort zone. And his comfort zone, no matter how many dates he had while he had been in a 'relationship' with Beverley, while he's in a 'not-quite-a-relationship' with Zack, is the euphemism of claustrophobic.

He could tell himself that he's being sociable with another human being, if one interspersing swearwords every two or three words as being 'sociable'.

But fuck it all, Newton thinks, he was never one for being conventional.

So he tells Hudgins how amazing Zack was, in his eyes, which is pretty much, considering his own ego and proceeds to file a letter of recommendation and statement of mental sanity both to the PPDC Superintendent and to the Jeffersonian.

He doesn't do anything less than his reputation so he calls the Shatterdome Marshall regardless the hour, rambling at one hundred km per hour about what brilliant mind Zack has, but that his vocation isn't quite truly in the PPDC, but for the general public, on and on and on until the Marshal sighs and tells him that he would do all he could to get the young forensic anywhere he fucking wanted and if he could go to bed now thankyouverymuch.

Pity that Newton's not hearing any of that answer since he hung up as soon as his pre-rehearsed speech was over.

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This was why he hates Zack, even the last time he shakes his hand in farewell. He hates him so much at the thought that Zack is smiling to him for the first time, as he is going back to people who deep down care for him, people who think he matters as a person but a lot more he matters as a scientist, and since Zack doesn't have neither of these things here, even though Newton hates him, he will it to him, he will give him everything, if Zack allows him to, but for now, going back home it is. Back where people can make him smile: a family, co-workers who didn't have to shag him to make it through the job (relatively) sane. Yes, he thinks, loathing him and loathing that smile and loathing the tears that struggle to come to the surface, back home.

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Carlos De la Rieja

The thing that fascinates Newton about Carlos is that the man conveys the feeling to be a freaking nutter, and at the same time one of the most grounded men to ever walk this kaiju-damned planet.

It creeps out all the people Newton tells this to, but he actually met Carlos before their first day of internship at Las Palmas Shatterdome. Well, 'met' is a strong word. He saw him. But just like Newton doesn't believe in Fate but secretly does, and Carlos says he does while he really doesn't, 'met' could be the right word, probably.

So he 'met' Carlos the day before the "roll call" (yes, Newton is still calling it that). He was strolling around the outskirts of the small military settlement when he saw this Hispanic, a little chubby but fairly beautiful man standing in an abandoned field. That's it. He was standing in the middle of a field of wild plants higher than him, eyes on the sky, as motionless as a thousand-year-old monolithic.

After that, it should have crept him out when he saw Carlos doodling meaningless swirling shapes in a notebook at the café at the other end of town, that _he reached with the tram_, _how the hell did he got here so fast_.

It should have, but it didn't. Instead he thought "_cool dude_" and went on ordering his mid-day shot of caffeine.

That evening, it should have crept him out even more that he saw Carlos sitting on a bench, gazing down a blank postcard. And he knew it was one because Carlos always kept it on his person, one way or another, and two hours don't pass before he pulls it out and looks at it, _intently_, while he thinks people aren't watching him and after a while hides it away again.

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Carlos is, hands down, the sweetest man Newton met yet. But not in an unnerving, want-to-strangle-you-in-your-sleep way, but in a non-committal, easy way.

The scientist's not a hippie, but he's got that aura around him. Newton kind of likes him instantly, and maybe that Hispanic tanned skin does things to him, even if he's a bit abundant and he's got more than a little pudge, but there are muscles there, he is positive because he gets a glimpse of them the mornings before Carlos puts on his lab coat. He can tell that Carlos is working out to loose the bit of body fat he has in excess, and seeing those clenching biceps so early in the morning in the first two weeks, holds a direct line to his lower regions.

But it's not until one pouring day, when Carlos must have missed the tram on the way from the small Indian restaurant he loves, since he's completely drenched, that he notices he has tattoos. The man has tattoos. The man with the chocolate-coloured skin and the kind smile and charcoal, messy hair, who grins when Newton plays the Stones at impossible volumes at eleven in the night, has got tattoos. It's like Christmas came early.

It was in the seconds between Carlos slipped his shirt from his neck and tucked in his spare t-shirt he fished from their shared cabinet, but Newton is certain he saw something round on his bicep and thin, tall letters in the middle of his shoulder-blades. A purr threatens to get out from Newton's chest but with a sip of coffee he can blame the coughing fit to the liquid, not to his breath having being punched out his lungs. Thank god for small things.

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The fascinating thing about Carlos is that he's as visionary as Newton, or almost there. He _looks_ a well-grounded guy, and he _is_ for most aspects, but he can get carried away easily in the fumes of Newton's theories, and once you get him started, there's nowhere he can't go with his mental schemes.

Newton must admit – only under solemn swear, though – that it was originally Carlos' idea that they couldn't scope the kaijus' DNA maybe simply because it was entirely different from their concept of the DNA.

"_Maybe it's not a double-helical, maybe it's-it's a triple-helical! Eh? What about that! Or a quadruple! Maybe the answer to cancer annihilation is an unfathomable quadruple-helical alien DNA!_"

And that's where Newton stopped driving in his same lane down that highway and got back to planet Earth, connected by a breath to planet Kaiju but whatever, one step at a time, and gritted his teeth until white foam started coming out from his mouth, thus convincing himself that there was no path left but take the goddamn module and filing a calculus request to the mathematicians department. Those posh, slimy bastards.

He can't help but wonder how his life came to this. How come that the only bastard who invented the algorithm to draw a rough sketch of kaiju's DNA is Gottlieb.

Because of course this is his life. Because it sucks. And of course the discovery must be named Geiszler-Gottlieb.

Newton doesn't have teeth anymore at the end of the closed-doors conference with the big impending bosses of the Shatterdome. He gritted them all.

They even made them sit next to each other like they are in fucking grade school on a joint assignment, for fuck's sake! The only upside is that from their position he could fly out the exact second the Marshal dismissed, not without whispering in Gottlieb's ear that he would have been lost, helplessly lost, if it wasn't for him. Newton Geiszler. And mark his words and write down his name because one day soon he was going to be a fucking rock star. You just stand there and watch.

It's not long after he has to cringe at the memory of that day.

Two months later – during which Newton spends his time absolutely not pining and not tip-toeing around the gradually becoming hotter-than-kaiju-blood Hispanic co-worker – Raiju manages to destroy three Jaegers before Cerno Alpha arrives, all the way from freaking Norway, and gets it down for good, after the kaiju wiped away from life five major cities. Five.

Five is also the number of the DIAs and a traumatized pilot has been reported to the Shatterdomes as classified data. Sixty thousand casualties, reply the Pan Pacific higher-ups. There aren't even bodies to bury, reply the Marshals. The recovery teams couldn't find them in the heap of drowned metal. So shut up the fuck up.

Newton's glad that there are so few Asians in this Shatterdome, as he flys his way to Berlin, as the videos from Tokyo are one more heart-ripping that the other and two mass-fights erupted in the canteen and had to be interrupted by the Marshal, in the span between the attack and Newton's departure.

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He gets Raiju tattooed high on his arm so he can hides it even if he raises his sleeves. It's not that he doesn't want to show it, on the contrary, Newton's never shy about his tattoos and can't wait to show them off, but he knows that someone's punch will 'accidentally' collide with his face one of these days in the mess of the common areas if he does and the headache resulting from the impact would compromise his work. So, yeah, not thanks. For now.

It's just a matter to wait for a couple of months for people to focus on the next attack, instead that dwelling in the past. By then, he could go around bare-chested; unless he goes around gloating about it, no fists would gladly make acquaintance with his face, but Newton's not in that team of crazy, so it's fine.

It's more than fine after Carlos accepts his invitation to dinner in his apartment. He's a tad weird, since he gets all high about explaining UFO sights and paranormal phenomenon and their effects on humans' psychology over the decades, but Newton listens without complains, Carlos' voice is like the best part of him, is like honey, a liquid-honey waterfall and he doesn't want for it to stop anytime soon.

Except when they're kissing in his shabby kitchen, bracing themselves on the countertop, and Newton thinks he never wanted anything else like Carlos' soft lips against his. Well, until Carlos finally parts his lips at his administrations, when thought becomes a jumbled _needwantmorepleasenowyes_, even if it's not only their sixth dinner – seriously, it's like Newton became a fucking wooing sixteen year nerd – that he dares whimper in frustration while he tugs the hem of Carlos' trousers and, he hopes, the hem of his boxers too.

Because it's like that with Carlos. The man is so damn weird, the whole maintenance team thought that he was a psychotic serial-killer, while the other interns, more acquainted with him by the winter came, thought he was possessed by an angel or a ghost, oblivious of the way of the workings of the world and painfully honest and radiant.

This is how Newton thought it would have been easy to strip Carlos of his plaid shirts and dark, somehow-always-elegant trousers, but it's not, in fact, like that. The scientist is, as aforementioned, one of the most grounded men Newton met. He has this grade school teacher attitude, caring and gentle, and the impression that he can get scared a tad too easily, and that made Newton step back the moment he thought he was ruffling his lab-partner's feathers a bit too much with his pace.

He. Newton Geiszler. Only making out until he got his partner at ease. He must be a goner. He was a goner.

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The deal with Carlos and his tattoos is at the opposing end of Newton's. Whereas he wants to show them off (eventually), Carlos is more intent on hiding them (possibly forever).

Carlos explains he chose their location very carefully, he's dead set on wearing long pants at all times, and he says he loves to wear his lab coat anyway.

Newton doesn't understand his problem, though, even if shy-Carlos, when he asks about them (sometimes more pushy sometimes less), is a sight to behold, he decides to take back on some old habits and starts random hook-ups with cute girls and fit men alike around the islands.

It's nice, liberating even, for a while. Then Newton's suppositions for Carlos' tattoos border on obsession and he decides to woo it out of him. Again. Fuck his life. Flowers, cinema, dinner at a smelling kebab place, the whole package deal. And he resolutely ignores the pang of betray because _he_ showed Carlos all of his ink-smeared skin. And he doesn't do that with any co-worker before the beginning of spring, at least, which means that the internship time is coming to an end and damn, he's dying to know, if it's not spring yet, he can't wait until then.

Christmas carols can be heard from the streets through tight-shut windows the night they stumble in bed and he unceremoniously blows Carlos off to coax him into taking all his clothes off.

He never thought of himself as particularly good with that but tonight he does, he's freaking top of the best, because Carlos clothes pile up one after the other somewhere on the floor by the beds, and the semi-darkness isn't as thick as to not let him see, also because he may have or may not have left the bathroom's light on and the door ajar, so he rakes his hands in a dark haze which lets him make out the twirls of the ink, even if he looks for too long they look like they're spiralling, curving, morphing over the breathing of the olive skin.

There's a compass on his left arm and if its needle stirs relentlessly, Newton files it under 'I'm too high on arousal right now'; the letters on his back are longer and thinner than he remember, but maybe because he saw them from a distance, they spell "Night Vale" and Carlos explains that it's a town, only that he can't find a single place name Night Vale, not even a in every map of every century he got a hold of.

Before he can ask why he engraved in his skin the name of a non-existing town, he notices a blot on Carlos' leg and roughly turns it around with his hand. On his calf there's a giant open eye, perched on an antenna tower, with little lightings blowing out of it from the corners. It's the old sign for a radio station, only the eye is misplaced.

Carlos looks sheepishly down at it like he only remembers now of its existence, while saying, no- whispering, that that one actually appeared on his skin one of the last days of college. It was his first and the one that prompted him to go to the tattoo artist and get the images of his nightmares burn in his unblemished skin.

Because it wasn't unblemished anymore. He wasn't. He was marked. At least that's what he felt by then.

From his current position around Carlos' thighs, Newton looks up to him, gazes into his hot-cocoa eyes and yes, there is a spark there, the glint of something deviant yet childish as a kid's wonder whether are we alone in the universe.

Newton pushed himself up with his elbows and kisses him slowly, dragging his lower lip out how he knows Carlos love and he thinks that maybe it was low of him to have cheated the Hispanic man into an early confession time.

It's purely for the record that he talks to Carlos about the cause behind his tattoos on Monday morning.

The smell of coffee surrounds his senses in a reassuring haze as he puts together the puzzle of his fascination for the kaijus, bits by bits.

Carlos doesn't understand at first, nobody does after all; but he gets, eventually, that Newton doesn't mean anything against the victims of the attacks, Jesus Christ, of course he doesn't he's not a monster, but he's so immensely curious about the kaijus, wanting to know more and more about them, about their physiology, the way they see this world, their world, their inner workings, not only of their bodies but also of their mind.

"_They're the ultimate evolution of the dinosaurs, but they're so different it's creepy! Their size could signify that the current of the time in their dimension isn't the same as ours, just imagine how many gozillions of years must have taken to develop that size, those bones, those glands, Jesus, they have glands that burst the moment their heart stops so we don't even know half of them, and they are in place our body doesn't even have and their eyes, don't you wonder if they can see in the darkness or if they use one of their six senses? And underwater? How would they react to sudden loss of oxygen?_" and he goes on and on, arguing that people shouldn't even look at him like he's crazy because he isn't.

The fact that by learning so much about the kaijus helps to the abortion of their life is a collateral effect to him, really. Just look at the hypocrisy of humans, how they are disgusted by the inner function of their bodies, but when it's time to learn how does a human body dies, they scoot over like millions of ants in an inch-wide formicary to see the many, many way of how to cut, burn, maim, let rot a human body and doesn't that make Newton a saner person, since he wants to know how kaijus _live_ in the first place, not to kill them, but simply to _know_ them?

Carlos at least was sincere with him and told him that he doesn't understand how he can desire to know everything the kaijus, they are non-sensical killing machines, practically, but he understands his want to know the unknown.

That's what that walks close with the insane, in Carlos; the myth, the legends, the paranormal in the everyday activities. Things like the magnetism that ties the moon to the water, '_I mean, there's practically no water on the moon, so why water, why not fire?_', or the musicality of certain types of woods, or the burning corneas in your eyes after you look at the sun for so long and the blot becomes an intense shade of turquoise and you can look at the sun if you overlap that shape with the rounded globe of the setting sun.

Things that other people don't even think about normally, never imagined or held any curiosity of, that's what Carlos wants to know, desperately, one step after another yes, but completely in the end.

It began in his infancy, when he thought he could see eyes in the reflection of the windowpanes right before going to bed, whereas he knew it was the standby lights of the tv, dvd recorder and the house' phone line. It was this contradiction between reason and superstition, sharing equal space in Carlos' mind, that served as the ideal moisture for the seed of his future dreams, or nightmares.

That's what Newton extracts from their rare conversations at the Turkish tea-house in town. Not that they rarely speak, on the contrary they become thick as thieves week by week, talking restlessly about kaijus, throwing there hypothesis, even sharing some random gossip about the Shatterdome, sometimes to one another, sometimes to themselves, the other one not really listening.

But the few, precious times that Carlos loosens himself enough to let something personal slips his lips, it's a fragment of his multi-coloured personality that Newton holds tightly, until it bruises him, until it hurts, until love is over-pouring near the edge of hate.

Newton is fucking glad he pushed and poked and popped their respective personal bubbles, though. It's brought the sex to a whole new level.

Newton has never been a touchy person, especially in a relationship. But as spring comes, it's like Carlos blooms along with the landscape. His skin is smoother, almost glowing, his muscles are still shy but his hips and thighs are less chubby-chubby, Newton still has to determine whether that's good or bad, his hair is still messy as hell but it feels like liquid silk when he scratches his scalp with his fingertips, when they kiss, or when he yanks gently at his dark locks, that time Carlos blows him languidly one Sunday morning, before he takes him to a motherfucking flower festival. A flower festival, he's not kidding.

He had to bang the young, afro girl Simon sees sometimes to feel manly again, in a freaking back alley, too, like a proper jerk.

Things get a little weird when Carlos starts relating his dreams, that, at that point the glow surrounding him begin to shimmer into the visionary. Hardcore visionary. Since apparently Carlos has these recurring dreams, or nightmares, it depends whether he is in a shitty mood or not (shitty mood is a relative term for the cherub personality he's got, okay), that revolves around this mystical slash mythical town, Night Vale.

Since sophomore year, in high school and throughout college, Carlos dreamt about a town where everything is different from anywhere else. There are hooded figures relegated in a park, public clocks melt under the scorching sun in spring, UFO-like lights flicker in the sky below glowing clouds in spiralling movements and small animals fall from the sky, along with the usual purple rain.

And if by the end of the season Newton is positively freaked out because hey, even he can't fish out money from his ass every time he has to buy a joint from Gary when he has to process Carlos' idle musings, and his medications royally suck, so. Not his fault really.

Sometimes Newton thinks he pushed Carlos into the full-physical part of the relationship out of sheer frustration. Their Superintendent had become chummy-fucking-chummy with the mathematicians' department and he was getting strange ideas about a joint try-out week between biologists and mathematicians and guess who Newton was paired up with?

So, yeah. Better struggle to get in Carlos' hot, tight ass, thankyouverymuch.

By the time Carlos comes into the lab in the morning and starts rambling about his night's dream - which is usually so hazy as to let him see a flickering light or tentacles-like limbs but Carlos is perfectly content with it - instead of driving down route 'kaiju 66' with Newton's not-so hyper impromptu anymore, Newton discovers this peculiar trembling settling in his hand that makes him want to aggressively acquaintance his palm with Carlos' unblemished caramel-coloured cheeks. Repeatedly. Or maybe grab his temple and smack his head on the nearest blob of rough concrete wall. Again, repeatedly.

By the time his tremor can't be ignored he's gone to the bathroom to punch the wall and he's almost considering the Superintendent's suggestion to get that fucking joint-project started, 'cause apparently he can't do it without the most famous bio and math interns' full participation, with all the ruckus in the higher-ups going on.

It takes only a long look in the cafeteria to get Newton's guts revolt against him with a decisive twist because the world might be ending but he's not enough high on medications to deal with Herr Hermann fucking Gottlieb yet.

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The day Newton snaps should be marked in history. It sure is marked by an angry red smear on his calendar, which is probably the only small object that survives in his apartment later that night – everything else is satisfactorily torn to shreds or turned upside down or splattering the walls. He knows he'll have to pay the landlady for that but fuck if it was liberating.

It's so hot outside that he thinks he's not breathing properly even though they're at some dozens meters above sea level, not four thousands. The humidity rate is so high, it makes the number of the temperature on the news and on his phone blinking stupidly at him like an empty promise winked by a cute bartender - she never came round the corner on the back alley, though - and fuck, the fact that Newton is recollecting that particular failure is itself a bad omen.

He never felt as stupid, as ugly, as messed up as on that particular evening. He had just helped figured out the fucking density of kaiju bones for fuck's sake, does she know how many people will save a simple fact like that? Does the world know?

God he can't wait to be a rock star.

And maybe he feels a little stupid sitting in an over-crowded bar in this heat, this evening, because even if the streets are crowded both ways with idling people trying to will the heat out of their bones with cheap sangria and too-spicy king-sized paellas, he still thinks that he would be better having angry, sticky, messy sex in bed – or not, the cold tiled floor of his bathroom sounds heaven right now – with his hot Hispanic … partner… co-worker… friend with benefit… relationship, whatever.

But it's been two weeks, yes you heard that, two whole weekends passed since he got laid and he didn't bother looking for casual date since it's only a couple of months before the end of the internship and he knows that in the end, as Carlos is Carlos, he will be freaking fucking sweet about it and he'll break it off slowly, letting Newton time to drift apart from him and maybe Newton hates him for that. Maybe Newton is fucking terrified of that, of the sad smiles Carlos will reserve for him, in the canteen, at the café over breakfast, at the bar over drinks, in the hallways as he spots him speaking with a small clique of their co-workers and yes, maybe Newton resents him for that already, sue him.

Perhaps that's why he asks about something he never asked before, only because he knew from the first day, that that object-subject is delicate for the Hispanic scientist. He asks about the radio he's carrying with himself all the time and to which he's dead-set on listening closely, alone, far from anyone else, even if the only station he listens to is grey noise.

Carlos' strict yet undeniable endearing refusal is proof that this uncharted water bears monsters, beasts and shadows, in his mind, but Newton hasn't got a second thought to spare for anyone today.

"_I mean, you fumble with the stations 24/7 and when you stop you grin like a total moron. It's like you found the radio program of your fucking crush. No? Don't tell me you made that up and it's just a pathetic excuse for not socialising with people_." He sneers. "_It's not like I'm your only friend around here, mh?_"

It is the cruellest thing he said after the "_I hope your dad gets eaten by a kaiju_" to a classmate when he was 12 and he was sent to the therapist for the first time, and he feels instantly awful and he half-listens to Carlos' hushed rambling because Carlos is too nice to even breathe the same air as scum like Newton and he doesn't want to leave shit unsaid between them and when the universe decided to make Carlos into this fucking sweet person god damn it.

Apparently, ten-years-old Carlos wanted nothing more than a radio for his birthday. If he wanted it to take it apart and re-assemble it for the sake of science or simply just to have a match to his father's old one, god only knows, but he received it nonetheless.

After a while of messing with it (and kind of taking it apart and re-assembling it), he found the deep voice of a man who related the chronicles of an impossible city. At first Carlos thought that it was a fables radio station, uncensored, of course, but still fables. The thing is that the deep, slow rhythmical voice lulling him to sleep in the train on a humid afternoon or on a park bench on Sunday morning, and the fact that the fleeting voice never stayed at the same channel for long period of times, prompted Carlos to frantically search for it, day after day, minute after minute, until he found. He didn't know then but he slowly made the boy fall into the half-crazed, half-methodical personality that he possess.

"_His name is Cecil._" He says, and Newton thinks he never heard him use a softer tone of voice since he's known him. "_It took me year to realize that it was his name, can you imagine?_" he laughs drily, as if all the strength has been dragged out his sprawling body.

"_And he says everything that happens – or not happens – in the small city of Night Vale. Yes, the one on my back._" He turns around to look at the street, crowded with lights and people, blurring together in a slow stream of life, without really seeing any of it. He's gone, Newton thinks. He has been gone all this time and he was too fucking self-conceited to recognize it.

"_One day I'll get there. One day I'll go to Night Vale._" And Newton realizes, right then and there, that the pang sitting in his chest for some time is guilt, mixed with desperation. Because he knows he forced his hand here, he practically forced Carlos in such a fucked-up relationship and how much one can be truly desperate to do something like that?

Fuck.

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He wants to punch him. He wants to punch him so hard to leave a blue bruise on his jaw. He want to beat the crap out of him and break his fingers so that if he wants to jam with radio station all day he has to use his tongue.

It's crap like that that puts Newton in the therapist's office. It's a woman, in this Shatterdome, and he tunes her out as soon as she says that he had made a step ahead by coming to her willingly.

Bull-.

That's all the point of bipolar, isn't it? One moment you want to smash your partner's cheekbones to pudding and the next one you want to get yourself locked up in jail, blabbering 'sorrysorrysorrysorry' until your voice gives up on you.

_Pity_ that that word doesn't even know friends' friends of his vocabulary.

'_Last time._' He thinks. '_Three times' a charm, right? This is the last time. No more relationships. Fuck relationships. Who needs relationships anyway? World's oldest job, they call it. Who am I to argue with that?_'

Point is, he doesn't remember much from that night, even. And it should scare him, and when Carlos doesn't come to work for a week, it should make him run to his flat, instead he runs to the hospital and finds out that a man resembling Carlos has checked out with an hematoma on his jaw a week ago and it should make his stomach churn and it should make him kneel and throw up till he heaves dry, it really shouldn't make him smirk like it's a dirty secret between the two of them and fight a full blown grin and feel smug.

He should remember the words he said to him, too. Because the men who come clean up everything by Carlos' lab are mechanics from the maintenance team and they don't bother offering explanations as much as he doesn't bother ask for them. They sneer at him and he sneer at them and they sneer at each other until they're done, until one of them slams an envelope on Newton's desk.

It's wrinkled and fuzzy at the angles, like someone clutched it in their sweating hand to throw it away but thought better of it. There's his name on the front. Not Newt, though and doesn't he miss it already said by Carlos. It's full name. Newton Geiszler. He turns it around and finds it open, the lid torn. So much for privacy, in this fucking Shatterdome.

He thinks that they would have burned it alongside with everything that wasn't copied into hard-disks and brought to the Marshal, as they always did at the end of an internship. His hands may or may not shake slightly as he opens it.

"_Thank you for giving me that push_." It reads and Newton's breath gets stuck in his lungs. "_I needed it. I'm going to find Night Vale. I'll send you a postcard, okai?_"

It's honest-to-god written with an 'I'. Carlos always said that he didn't like it with the 'Y' and it never failed to make Newton chuckle and shake his head because, honestly, how could this person be real? He imagines Carlos' soft voice spelling the words, and lingering on that final '_okai', _his voice turning up in that stupid almost high-pitched tone, like the thousands ones he said to him, tilted head, booze exchanged between them while they walked down a random street when Carlos asked him if he wanted to head to his or Newton's, or simply when he asked if Newton was okay.

He doesn't know what to respond. He hushes the screaming voices in his forehead, calling him names, mocking him, praising and encouraging him because who the fuck cares anymore anyway, and he goes home replaying all the '_okai's_, all the times Carlos said '_okai_?' to him.

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The "Relaigh Brothers" happens and Newton's and everyone's foundations, their very ground, takes a good shake under their feet.

As Gypsi Danger collapses head-on on that beach, they all take a swoop, landing on their butts, as if someone swung at their stomach with a baseball bat.

It's the last drop and the PPDC goes…NUTS.

The pilots are dismissed, the scientists put on hold, the Shatterdomes go dormant, like bears in a coma inside their burrows, with the least number of people required inside, the Jaeger program itself is put under interrogation. Which, if you asked Newton, is total crap. Because in the year (nine months but whatever) that they all hold their breaths and watch while the governments debate and play at comparing dicks, throwing out ideas with no beginning and no end, while the Hong Kong Shatterdome, just finished, is left to deal with the kaijus practically alone; well, Newton can't count the projects and hypothesis he could be working on.

As his last Shatterdome was situated so near Europe, he gets a free pass for all European countries and doesn't spare a look for his crush, see: Prague, and goes directly home, to Berlin. Because fuck 'home is where family is', his family doesn't even bother calling him back when he left a message saying that his internship ended and he passed with flying colours and he left with five letters of recommendations in his coat pocket, so why would he even spare them a double thought?

No way in kaiju's hell.

News fly, though, and he hears that almost all the Marshals are hushed into agreeing to the crazy-ass idea of the Wall, apart from the new Marshal, the one who visited Las Palmas' Shatterdome a couple of times.

Everyone whispered around him because rumours went that he was a pilot and not _some_ pilot, but the only pilot who made it alive out of the Tokyo's fiasco, and that he wasn't traumatized as the higher-ups first sold them, he was injured or sick, something 'unspeakable' like that.

But now he's one of the handful of authority figures who fight to keep the Jaeger Program above the water level and the TV stopped saying his name, even, but Newton and every soldier in the network know it's him, because when you're sinking in a sea of shit you want to know the name of the hand that's grasping yours and when you do, the fuck that you let it go.

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He tries to remembers what the lyrics he's looking for are. An afternoon, because who the fuck knows which day of the week is anyway, finds him sitting in front of the computer, white knuckles clutching the mouse, with canned food and about a dozen of coffee cups littered around the desk.

Today the world is going to hear the response of the (too-long) PPDC summit, and the moment he sees that the Jaeger Program has been proclaimed obsolete and is programmed 'to come to its natural end' – he wonders who dared come up with the idea to actually put those words on national TVs – along as the growth of the Wall is expected to be complete in three years.

Newton's fingers instantly blur over the keys as he snorts. '_Three years my inked arse'_. Or not. But he's determined to.

He passes through the three-layers military-level logins of the Shatterdomes website to find that Marshal Pentecost - that's the name of the leader of his heart, he decides – has posted a message already.

He doesn't write roundabout shit like 'coming to its natural end' or 'project', he says that they will probably shut down half of the current Shatterdomes in less than a month and concentrate forces in Alaska, Siberia, Peru, Australia and China.

Newton's stomach does a somersault when he thinks about the dozen, thriving Shatterdomes, columns of their defence, being reduced to a mere five. It makes him want to crawl in a corner and let himself being terrified and even think about cry, but closes his eyes tight until he sees purples blots. He also knows that the one in Siberia is nothing more than backup and will probably host less than half of the required staff there. He shivers and takes a deep breath over his latest cup of chocolate milk.

The rest of the message is as blunt as the beginning. Marshal Pentecost almost gives the finger to the personnel cuts of the PPDC's summit and asks – actually asks – for everyone's cooperation. He writes that he can't orders anyone to come, but if they enrolled for whatever field they enrolled in, it's because they believed in the project, they had faith.

'_Place your faith in me_.' the lines practically scream. But if they decide to come on-board, there's no fucking around this time. Work will be ten times harder and space will be shared, since they no longer have the public's unwavering favour now, but Newton could care less, he barely reads the part describing that there's no money to provide them private lodgings outside the compound, he can sleep wherever he wants, and practically skims to the end, when is said a mail has been sent to their personal contact numbers.

0.2 seconds later, a mail, the only mail he received in months actually, shines through Newton's screen. If he answers the roll call, he's to report to Sydney Shatterdome as soon as possible.

He fist up the air before he recollects himself. Who knows, there might be government cameras everywhere. He feels like a spy in incognito and by the seconds, a man on his way to become a rock star, or more, a legend.

The last stand of humanity.

Fuck shared spaces. He's a member of the resistance now.

.

.

.

Only that 'space will have to be shared' must be the understatement of the century. Fuck his life.

The Sydney Shatterdome is a black compound, terrifyingly resembling a black swan or a pirate ship, sailing off Sydney Bay, as the opposing to the White Orchestra Ruins which now lie abandoned at the centre of the port. "_A black swan will rise above the white one_." He remembers the mayor's speech like it was yesterday morning.

Marshal Pentecost is a squared-looking man in his late thirties. His uniform is pristine and his black curls look fairly tamed if not in need of a cut but the purple bags under his eyes give him away. Newton actually gapes at the man. He has bags under his eyes, for god's sake.

Not that in a Shatterdome you don't see every single moving person with heavy dark shadows round their eyes, but Pentecost is the first Marshal he's seen who looks just as much worn out as the man or woman next to him. O his god.

"Doctor Geiszler." Pentecost regards him, and nods. Newton doesn't know if the nod means appreciation to him accepting the call with half the pay in an over-crowded Dome or because he recognizes him. Either way, Newton loves the man instantly. Doctor Geiszler. Jesus on the cross he will work fifteen hours a day for this man. He will synthetize the cure for AIDS out of kaiju's blood, if he has to.

Six minutes in the not-so-labyrinthic-hallways-after-all later he hears the fateful words. He has….he has to share a lab? He has to work with half a functioning lab? And he has to share it with a freaking mathematician's nonetheless? Before he can snap, Pentecost is talking.

"His name should more than ring you a bell. You worked with Gottlieb before."

What.

"Gott… As in Hermann Gottlieb?"

Pentecost half-turns him to give him an assessing frown. "Problem?"

He wants to laugh. Problem. Yeah, problem all right. "I mean, there's been a mistake. I don't know him. I never worked with the man." he almost says 'at all' before realizing how much of a five-years-old he must look if he does.

Pentecost frowns a millimetre more and Geiszler almost squirms like a fucking fourteen-years-old (girl), almost. "Records say you worked with him in several occasions, the most remarkable projects being discovering the density of kaiju bone tissue and the formula of the kaiju's DNA." There's not even a vague hint of question there, as if he's daring Newton to speak back.

He doesn't know that Newton's picturing all the ways his Superintendents could die right in this moment. Maybe he shouldn't have played The Stones at three in the night. With the door open. Saying that it didn't reverberate through the hallways till the ladies bathroom would be complete and utterly absurd denial. Anyway.

He also tries to imagine which of the thousands of times they overheard him shouting swearwords and curses at the mathematicians department (see: one Hermann Gottlieb) even long before he spot, let alone learned to recognize, the man's face in the canteen. Yes, he muses now, they might have heard him a couple of times then.

"And who am I to argue with the records." He says when he notices that they're not moving and that Pentecost is still regarding him with a slight (but menacing as fuck) frown. "Sir." He adds hastily. And that seems to repair whatever challenge he threw at nature's pyramid. They're walking again.

Now Newton positively hates the man guts. He hates him like he never hated a Marshal before, let alone a pilot. He hopes he could burn the man on his feet in that moment.

And it's in this lovely, lovely mind-set that he enters the lab. _Their_ future lab.


End file.
